Windy enough for ya yesterday? Yeah, me too. ;-)My car is broke, my check is late, I'm out of meds, and you know what? I don't really care... lol Everything is going so great that I really can't be bothered. The tee shirts are still waiting to be sent out, but if you're going to the Authority Zero gig tomorrow night, just let me know and I'll bring your shirt to the gig. It'll save me the $2.25 postage... ;-)

Yeah, I'm subbing in on drums for Guilty by Association tomorrow night @ Backstage Bar & Billiards, playing on a bill that includes The People's Whiskey and War Called Home. It's probably gonna be for the last time, because they've apparently gotten a new drummer who isn't me, and I wish them the best of luck with all their future endeavors. I hope whoever they got is good, because there's nothing worse than seeing a band I used to drum for playing with a drummer that sucks... and there's too many examples that I could cite that would prove that theory! LOL Everything is updated. Who cares about a Superbowl if the Raiders ain't in it! hahaha Have a great weekend. I know I'm going to. :-)

Last night was a lot of fun. The Love Has No Bounds charity event raised a decent amount of cash for Operation Homefront, not too shabby of a turnout, and it was great just hanging out and talking shop with Friends and talking shit about Enemies... lol Not really, but I do have a reputation to live down, ya see? Yeah, it was a exquisite night. Lots of top notch Art on display, including the stuff from Dan 45 in the picture over here, and somebody was handing out Root Beer Milk, which looked and sounded atrocious. Thanx to Danielle and Ryan from Nevermore Productions for handling and taking care of everything like the professional consummates that they are, and Thanx to Liz and Jason and everyone else at the Hard Rock Cafe for all the delicious food and accoutrements, including the diet soda for those of us with diabeetus. ;-) No Thanx to the ass clowns who thought it was a good idea to cut our set and The People's Whiskey's set short. I gave the whole thing a quick write up, which should be up sometime this week. Hopefully.

I posted the photos I took of the Blasters playing @ the LVCS a few weeks back, and you can click here to check those out. I also posted some photos of Common Tongue, a really good band from AZ. that I played a few gigs with back in July, and you can click here to check those out. "Like" them on Facebook by clicking here. I also added the video I took of the Blasters playing at the LVCS to my YouTube channel. Came out pretty good. The song is Shakin', of course. ;-) Everything is updated. Free time is a luxury but always very appreciated. ;-)

So the Las Vegas City Life magazine / newspaper / whatever is shutting down.Big whoop dee doo.That paper hasn't been relevant for years now, and I think I last read one by choice back in 2009 when they did a story on East Side Joe, the 'mysterious man' behind the venue which carried his name. I always see them in the rack at the Felipito's that I frequent, but there's never anything remotely interesting to me on the cover that validates the effort it takes to bend over and pick one up. Hektor Esparza did an excellent job eulogizing the thing, and you can click here to read that. Neon Reverb Downtown music festival has officially announced that it's over and done with, and all I can do is laugh at the thought of all the poor Hipster bands that will no longer have some music festival promoters just as pretentious as the music they play telling them that they're 'relevant' and that their music is both 'heartfelt' and 'original'... hee hee heeIf you don't think that Punk Rock Posing has officially jumped the shark yet, if you still cling to the antiquated notion that the thing is all about 'bands and unity and hanging with your friends', well then I'm hoping that this years line up will convince you otherwise. A rehashing of headlining bands who have already played the festival, some less than 2 years ago, and padded out with a shitload of bands no one gives 2 shits about and who couldn't draw a crowd to see them play if they set their dicks on fire and ran around the stage, just make this years presentation beyond pathetic, almost as pathetic as the Local bands picked to represent the Punk Rock element of our beloved fair city. Barf. In all actually though, those 2 bands are the perfect representation for Punk Rock Posing - they both suck and they're both full of clueless idiots who wouldn't know what real Punk Rock was if it bit them on their asses. hahahaha Fucking Poseurs. Still shames me that my Friends support and attend this farcical gathering... le sigh.

I'm not really big on the whole self-promotion thing, but I did want to let you know about this gig I got coming up this weekend. It's being brought to you by the lovely people at Nevermore Productions, and it's at the Hard Rock Cafe with my band The Civilians, and it's for a really good cause called Operation Homefront, which provides emergency financial and other assistance to families of service members. It's a benefit concert called Love Has No Bounds, and there's a bunch of bands playing, including The People's Whiskey, and there's also gonna be a shitload of Artists, including the ever snazzy Dan 45, hawking their goods and selling off the efforts of their hard work and passion, so bring lots of cash, because besides all that, there's gonna be a raffle for a whole bunch of cool stuff, stuff soooo cool that I have no idea what any of it is! LOL If you wanna find out more about the event, and I'm hoping that you do, you can click right here and check out the Facebook event page because, well let's face it, you're nothing without a Facebook event page, right? Right! Come out to the gig on Sun. and support a worthwhile cause.And yeah, if I owe you a tee shirt, and you're coming to the gig, gimme a heads up and I'll bring it with me. :-)

First off, a posting that starts off with the words 'First off' is not necessarily always going to be some hate filled tirade or borderline psychotic rant, oh smart ass girlfriend of mine... ;-) No, sometimes it's just a mental cue to remember to say everything that you need to say, such as, oh, I dunno, the Music Review I gave the No More Saints - The Pacifist release, which you can read by clicking here. Karl Bakla gave a review to the latest release from the band Replica which you can check out by clicking here. Karl has an amazing website / blog thing going on called People Against Goodness And Normalcy (P.A.G.A.N.), and you can click here to go check it out. Why he doesn't post his musical musings on there, I'm not sure, but I'm always grateful that he sends in the stuff that he does. I love reading his writing. :-) If pretty pictures are more your thing, I posted up the photos I took last month of the Angry Samoans playing at the Redwood Bar, and you can click here to check those out. It's sad to see Metal Mike just hovering in the background like a weaselly little perv who only seemed to care about singing when the band did a Britney Spears cover... ugh.

The Blasters gig on Fri. was fun. Despite the Drummer making some HUGE mistakes, the band sounded pretty good. I forgot that they had so many good songs, Border Radio, So Long Baby Goodbye, Dark Night, Crazy Baby, etc. It was worth the price of admission to see all the scarf sporting, wool cap wearing Hipsters run for the exits one the Blasters started playing. Guess they were just there to see the opening band The Lucky Cheats, who were a glorified Blues band. Pretty good though. They had a smoking guitar player. The other opening bands were terrible. I don't even know who they were. Plus, there was nobody there, because the English Beat were playing for free @ the Hard Rock Cafe, and they had 2 for 1 drink specials going on, so yeah, everyone was there and not at the LVCS. That venue has become a joke. The sound there is atrocious, the no smoking inside the place is a royal pain in the ass, and paying $11 for a PBR tall can, a tall can that they sell for 99 cents at every Green Valley Ranch store in town, is beyond ludicrous. A $10 mark up on a can of beer? Fuck off with that shit. It's kind of sad that sooooooooo many 'Punk' shows there are so well attended, because, much like the sheeple that make Punk Rock Posing such a successful, money making venture, it just seems like nobody cares about such things, just simply preferring to justify their apathy by drinking overpriced booze and watching over the hill bands run through a 'greatest hits' set, which is exactly how I spent my Fri. night. Phooey.

Hey... it's been a few days... has Steve O'Hara done anything majorly stupid lately? LOL Everything's updated. I heard all about the Dwarves gig, but so what? After the fiasco Blasters gig, I think I'm just gonna avoid the LVCS as much as humanly possible. Maybe you should too.

So the Kelly Thomas verdict came in yesterday. I'm sure you've heard or read all about it, and I'm sure you all have your opinions on it too. As someone who grew up in the Fullerton area and hung out there quite a bit (my Pops worked on Gilbert St. in Fullerton) I can tell you that this is action by the Police is nothing new. As someone who used to frequent places in Fullerton like Big Johns or the Galaxy Roller Rink to see all those classic Punk bands I grew up with play those places, I can tell you that the action of those in control are nothing new. Granted, not to this extreme, of course, but the Fullerton Police department have always had the worst reputation for abusing their Power and just beating the shit out of Punx every chance they got. I think it's funny that in this PC golden age love your fellow man hippy bullshit Beardcore times we live in now that people actually thought the problem had went away or that it didn't exist anymore. No, it wasn't that the problem went away - it's that you moved away to hide from it, to get away from it, to pretend that it no longer existed. The problem is real. It's always existed. Always has, always will.

And where's all the umbrage at? Where's the rage? Say what you will, but after the Rodney King verdict, people affected by the decision, or even those who just felt that it was a huge injustice, took to the streets and let their dissatisfaction with the verdict be known! Colored people rioted. White people in Long Beach looted and wrote shitty songs about it. Pathetic and it figures. And what did I see after the Kelly Thomas verdict went public? Nothing, that's what. No public outrage, no riots in the street. Nothing. A black guy gets beat up by the Police, not even to the extent that Kelly Thomas was beaten, and people lose their shit. A white guy gets killed by the Police, and not a single fuck is given, except from the safety of the Internet, of course. My Facebook feed was overwhelmed with postings and comments from a bunch of PC pussy armchair warriors pontificating on how wrong and fucked up this was, screaming about what an injustice this was, looking for others to agree with them and pat them on that back and validate their miserable existence somehow. Gotta get those precious "Likes' on Facebook, right? Fuck. Look, I'm no better, and I, like the rest of you, didn't do shit about it, but I didn't do shit about it because I wasn't surprised by the verdict. I don't forget where I come from. I've never forgotten that All Cops Are Bastards. The Cops have never been my Friends. Nope. All Policeman suck. Yup. And to remind you all of that fact, here's a video of a song by a band that was singing about the abuse of Police power all the way back in 1982. Seems a shame that all of you seem to have forgotten the message. No wonder Punk Rock Posing is so well attended...